PYB 5260 – Human Development: Lifespan & Systems Perspectives
Discover How Developmental Factors Within The Stages Of Life Shape a Person
Format: Online
Duration: 16 weeks (Spring)
Credits: 3
Prerequisites:Must be admitted to the Antioch Online Clinical Mental Health Counseling graduate program
In order to understand who you will become, you have to understand where you came from. As a skilled mental health counselor, it’s important to recognize how your clients absorb information and what motivates them during their decision-making process. Knowing how your client processed developmental factors throughout their stages of life can help you discover what they perceive as “normal” behavior and why. You’re improved understanding of their perspective will increase and enhance your ability to work with and relate to others in a healthy way.
Course Description
This course will provide an overview of human development throughout the lifetime in the family, social and cultural context. The individual and family life cycles will be viewed as mutually interactive processes that are also affected by such factors as biology/genetics, gender, race, ethnicity, acculturation, religion, etc. The development of the individual through a systems perspective will be traced chronologically through a survey of a select number of major theoretical approaches and concepts. The family and other factors influencing and generated by the individual’s developmental tasks will be explored concurrently. Additional emphasis in this course will be placed on understanding how these developmental concepts apply to diverse groups, including minority cultural groups and both men and women.
What Kind of Work Will I Complete?
Human Development: Lifespan & Systems Perspectives strives to demonstrate how various developmental stages of life effect people differently. You’ll expand on the course content by sharing some personal experiences and commentary within the discussion forums and journal entries.
Sample Work: Participate and Reflect
Your participation in the discussion forums allows you to draw upon the feelings, experiences and reflections of others regarding the effect developmental factors have had at various stages of development. This shared information expands your knowledge and experience to better prepare you for counseling future clients.Your journal entries are a time for you to reflect more deeply on how the variety of factors in each developmental stage contributed to the values you acquired and the decisions you made during that time period, as well as how they have cultivated the adult you are today.
Sample Course Topics Include:
Throughout the course your studies will focus on a core set of topics that coincide with the course’s learning objectives. Sample topics are:
- Organizing Themes in Development & Fundamentals of Brain Development
- Early Years: Cognitive and Emotional Development
- Early Years: Self & Socialization and Cognitive Realms of Middle Childhood
- Middle Childhood to Early Adolescence: Moral, Gender and Peer Relationships
- Adolescence: Physical, Cognitive, Identity, and Social Development
- Young Adulthood: Physical, Cognitive, Socioemotional & Vocational Development
- Middle Adulthood: Cognitive, Personality, and Social Development and Living Well in
Adulthood - Stress, Coping and Well-Being in Midlife and Changes in Later Life
What You’ll Learn
Your deeper understanding of human development throughout all of life stages — from early childhood through the final stages of life — help you to better recognize the nature and needs of persons at varying developmental levels within family, social and cultural contexts.1 By the end of the program you will be able to:
- Describe, distinguish and apply theories of learning and personality development on individual and family development across the life span.
- Determine culture-based assumptions, beliefs and attitudes that contribute to definitions of a healthy, mature adult and family system. Recognize some of the effects of crises, disasters, and other trauma-causing events on persons of all ages.
- Describe and utilize theories and models of individual, cultural, couple, family, and community resilience.
- Explain a general framework for understanding exceptional abilities and strategies for differentiated interventions.
- Interpret human behavior developmentally and identify the effects of various developmental factors in a clinically-related context.
- Outline theories for facilitating optimal development and wellness over the life span.
For more information about this course, or other courses in the Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Antioch Online, please call (855) 792-1049, or request more information.